Nothing Better
by sekai no yakusoku
Summary: Sometimes being two sides of a coin puts you too close for comfort, makes you too alike to make any progress. And when this happens, if this happens, you might find that all you can do is say goodbye. [RobinxRaven]


Just a song fic inspired by a song that moved me. It's a one-shot I guess, my first shot at a one-shot actually. It occurred to me that sometimes though people have their own reasons for pairing Starfire with Robin or Raven with Robin or otherwise, sometimes the ideas of polar opposites or great likenesses are both unfounded.

That said, I must admit I go with the latter—likeness. However, I pondered the possibility of my preferred couple TRYING to work out, thinking they could because they can understand each other.

But the problem with understanding sometimes, is that you understand so much, you're too wise to do anything but let go.

Ah well.

Hope it's decent.

The song is by 'The Postal Service' and I do not own that or Teen Titans. Ah well, yet again.

Sorry for the longish author's note. Review/comment if you've the time. Much the please and thank you, as always.

-Rei

**Bolded** lyrics would be interpreting Robin's POV loosely (a guy sings at this point)  
_Italicized_ ones would be interpreting Raven's POV loosely (a girl sings at this point)  
Both **_bolded and italicized_** are shared (both singers sing at this point)  
All lyrics, just to be positive of what is what, are underlined.

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**Nothing Better**

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They tried. They really did: dark boy and dark girl. They had tried very hard.

**Will someone please call a surgeon  
Who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart  
That you're deserting for better company  
I can't accept that it's over...  
And I will block the door like a goalie tending the net  
In the third quarter of a tied-game rivalry**

"Robin," she let his name hang between them like a burning bridge.

"Raven, please," his plea still made her feel her resolve weaken, after all this time. She steeled herself against it as best she knew how, which wasn't very. His eyes bore past her own, straight to the core of her soul and she remembered when that look made her feel good...when that look meant something good.

"Robin," it was a sigh this time, telling him she had made her mind up and nothing could change it.

Not that he wouldn't try.

**So just say how to make it right  
And I swear I'll do my best to comply**

"Raven, I'm sorry. I never meant to..." he couldn't even say it. Never mind the fact that this was simply the most recent in what Raven had slowly, painfully and slowly learned was a pattern of her equally dark bird. Perhaps she should have seen more of this in him from that one glimpse into his own soul and mind when the boy wonder had found himself in a drug-induced state of hallucination, searching for Slade when all there was, was thunder, lightning and a team of four very worried teammates.

Perhaps.

But she had thought, foolishly and childishly, that because they both had darkness in them, this would not be a factor of hindrance, but a note of further similarity and closeness. She had not foreseen what she had not wanted to see: bouts of anger, yelling, broken things...

And most symbolically, most jarringly for her, she had not foreseen the tears, a sign of weakness only he could elicit, even to this day.

"I never meant to hurt you," such simple words. Robin took a step toward her.

And she would not retreat, no. The only sign of movement was the white billowing of her hooded cape; it had turned white a while ago, though not from purity as before.

Or even love.

It was simply the sign of change.

"I never meant to," he repeated, as though she hadn't heard him the first time.

"You never do, Richard," she whispered after five more minutes of tension, blackened by the rain fastening itself to their rooftop, matting the two titans' clothes and hair to their skin in a way that would have been funny if it were under another kind of circumstance.

If it were not such an old situation.

"Let me have another chance, Rae. Please, I...I need you. I didn't mean..." again, he couldn't say it outright, but he approached her in fuller strides and brought his hand to her cheek with a deceptive gentleness.

Deceptive.

"I can't," she said. I won't, she thought, as she felt his fingers caress the newly sensitive area of bruised flesh right beneath one of her endless amethyst eyes.

"You can't leave! We...I...we're supposed to be together. I know it." His voice had that conviction she had always found so steadfastly gorgeous, brazen sometimes to a fault and somehow noble about it, a leader by all accounts. She closed her eyes to his.

The blue was too much for her if she was going to do this.

"Even if we once were, that time is past," she replied, unable to hide her sadness, knowing even if she had, the lines in her face betrayed the twisting of her heart.

And if that didn't do it, the shaking of her, the trembling, did, and while it could have been the cold of the thunderstorm that pounded around them, she knew he knew her well enough to realize it wasn't the wet chill from the gale.

To know better.

"We always have time! Raven, just...this is what I've always wanted," he said in a quiet way the storm should not have allowed her to hear, but she did. Her eyes flickered open, a question imbedded in the irises. Robin recoiled. "No, no, not this," he clarified, again with tenderness as he cupped her face—this, she allowed. It would be the last time she did. "This," he bent to kiss her. "I've always wanted this. I can't just let you slip away. Stay with me...please," his lips told her lies with their soft and loving pressure.

**Tell me am I right to think that there could be nothing better  
Than making you my bride and slowly growing old together?**

Raven was not cold, no matter how the press viewed her, how at times even her own team viewed her. No, she was not cold. She was patient and more than that, she was from the very first day she had met the leader of the titans: loving...hopeful...understanding...and terribly wise.

Above all, that last one.

So, instead of pushing him back, shoving him away as she could have been justified in doing, she let the kiss linger like the aftertaste of something bittersweet, which it was. She let him wrap his arms around her in a way that promised a better tomorrow and she let him whisper more apologies until he was still again, and, because he had his own terrible wisdom, pulled away.

He pulled away because he knew she liked her space, even from him...especially from him.

Whichever.

The flint blue of his eyes scrutinized her for her reaction and he found it as she crossed her arms over her chest and shivered a little.

Trickles of rain made it difficult to tell if he had made her cry this time, but he didn't need to ask. He had tasted the salt on her lips, only seconds before.

"I do not think I will see you again," she both warned and declared in a way that belied an unexpected humbleness. Unlike some, Raven would not take this time to be righteous and crusade her way in fine words to a melodramatic departure.

Wryly—and she was surprised she had room to be wry in this moment—she thought that the rain was causing enough drama for both of them, all in its own naturally disastrous way.

"But—" he opened his mouth and shut it promptly with one look from her.

She was not done yet.

"And if I do, it will be long...and long."

There was grief.

"It will be different."

There was longing.

"But I am leaving tonight. I can't let this happen anymore, Richard,"

There it was again, a finality she could only achieve with his real name. The black haired vigilante cringed as his old friend continued to speak to him.

"This...I do not want this to be all you think you are capable of, but if I stay, that will be all you really are capable of." She pointed almost imperceptibly at the black and blue of a vented blood vessel on the skin below her right eye.

Robin didn't need to look to know it was there.

"Raven, no! I told you, I didn't mean it and I, every time I do...I'm getting better aren't I, at stopping?" he sounded so desperate, so unlike him.

The lost boy. His soul cried to her. Hers wavered.

_I feel must I interject here  
You're getting carried away, feeling sorry for yourself  
With these revisions and gaps in history  
So let me help you remember  
I've made charts and graphs that should finally make it clear  
I've prepared a lecture on why I have to leave_

A flash of lightning illuminated his face and she could find fear and doubt, love and anger, lust and a sense of incompleteness. That last one helped her come back to herself and she shook her head at him.

This would not do. This could not continue.

"You _can_ get better but not with me," her voice had an edge that she instantly regretted as she noticed his spine go rigid. "With someone else, perhaps," softer this time. His shoulders relaxed a bit. "But this is all we have now," she let her pointed finger drop from the bruise.

_So please back away  
And let me go_

"Please," it was her plea this time.

And it was his turn to shake his head.

**I can't my darling.  
I love you so...**

"You can't go to him," Robin all but commanded, knowing full well where she would head if she left as she told him she would. Raven only barely stopped herself from shrinking against a wall that wasn't there.

"I will do what I must," she paused. He waited.

_**But oh, oh...**_

"Even if it is not what I really want," she conceded at last.

Was this hope or stupidity? Robin wondered when he felt himself speak again.

"So stay," he continued on in what might have once been considered a romantically and courageously stubborn way.

**Tell me am I right to think that there could be nothing better  
Than making you my bride and slowly growing old together?**

But they couldn't go back now.

_Don't you feed me lines about some idealistic future  
Your heart won't heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures_

She wouldn't let them. He had said this before and she had listened.

**I know that I have made mistakes  
And I swear I'll never wrong you again**

But she could not listen any longer. As she neared him, her footsteps were either silent or drowned out by the surrounding noise of the tempest that reflected Robin's suppressed rage and her suppressed breakdown all in one. He leaned into her touch as she traced his face with a loving manner he knew, with a shattering feeling, he would not have the privilege of seeing again.

He had lost that privilege the first day he hit her, but until this moment she had allowed him it anyway, hoping as he too hoped: for something to improve, for his strange and obsessive nature to subside, for his anger and possessiveness to pass. None of which ever happened.

"Raven, I love you."

Her heart wished for oblivion.

Oblivion entailed a nothing desirable compared to the ache his words brought her.

_You've got allure, I can't deny  
But you've had your chance, so say goodbye_

She withdrew her touch and he felt frozen without it.

"I love you too," she couldn't lie about that, not now.

"So then why..." he trailed off. He knew why.

They stared at each other, dark at dark, each striving to keep on the light that kept them on the side they knew they needed to be on, a fight they had both been winning for so long, they forgot what it was like to lose. This made them remember.

This was what it was to lose a battle that seemed fairly simple when compared to harnessing and conquering their inner evils in the face of black and white villains of harassed cities. This was what it was to lose the fight against the worst of personal demons, the kind that could only be provoked by the one you cared the most about.

They were the most to each other. Of that, there was no doubt.

"Robin," that name rolling off her mouth with raindrops made his body and heart yearn for her. "Don't let me leave here without saying something more than that...please," again, it was her request.

How could he deny her? He couldn't, just as he could not deny the devils inside him that caused him to lose control and now had pushed her far beyond his ever reaching hands. He could hurt her and love her, yell at her and adore her, take her from the world and then give it back.

But he could not simply deny her.

"I," he faltered, "I only know one way to do this...I can't say it."

Out loud was not an option.

She nodded in understanding. Always so understanding. This time he let her initiate the gesture, standing on her toes as she brought his head down to hers. He knew that when he had done a similar thing, before, it was because she let him and that he ought not to try again, that if it did repeat, it would be her choice.

And it was her choice, her advance and her retreat, both in one rhetorical sweep of her arms, knocking all their chess pieces off the board with no opportunity to start again with so many lost.

He felt her lips, inhaled her scent and clung to her warmth.

The kiss, he wanted more as always but the light of him won out and he did not force anything, admirably keeping his response to an exact equal of hers.

And not out loud...not ever aloud...but in one last show of all they felt, he did as she asked.

_Say goodbye_

Without a backward glance, Raven became the only entity that would allow her the solace she needed now as she flew from her leader, flew far, far away to someone who had promised her sanctuary some time ago.

A man that Richard Grayson wanted to be.

But he was Robin first. Nightwing second. Richard Grayson last. As for that man the love of his life ran to for safety?

He would never be him.

So Robin watched her go, old words dying away forever as the last flick of her white cloak escaped his vision, melting into the wind and rain like running moonlight.

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whatcha think? 


End file.
